We are pleased to announce the establishment of the Access to Memory (AtoM) Foundation, a federally incorporated, community-driven, soliciting non-profit body. The Foundation was established to oversee and support the development, sustainability and adoption of Access to Memory (AtoM) as a multilingual, multi-repository open source application for standards-based archival description and access. The Foundation’s primary focus will be on leading the planning and development of AtoM 3, a successor version of the current software.

We believe a non-profit foundation is the best way to provide governance and promote community involvement in the development and maintenance of AtoM 3. AtoM is not just a software tool, it is an open-source project. Being open-source has profound implications for how software is developed, released, documented and made available to communities of users around the world. The Foundation wants to give organizations that use AtoM, or who are considering using AtoM, a stake in how the software evolves.

The Foundation will lead the development of AtoM 3 by soliciting funds from members and others to rewrite the software so that its sustainability is assured and its overall functionality enhanced while reflecting the descriptive needs of the archival community.

The Foundation also wants to support future migration from AtoM 2 to AtoM 3 to ensure users of the software can continue to rely on their current instances of AtoM while feeling confident that the development of a new version does not mean they will be left behind.

We are now accepting institutional and individual memberships. For more information about the Foundation, please visit our website.
https://accesstomemoryfoundation.org/

Inaugural Board of Directors,
Access to Memory (AtoM) Foundation

Creighton Barrett, Dalhousie University
Heather Gordon, City of Vancouver Archives
Paul Hebbard, Simon Fraser University
Jeremy Heil, Queen’s University
Tim Hutchinson, University of Saskatchewan
Lara Wilson, University of Victoria